Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm using LWP::UserAgent and HTTP::Request::Common to automate filling out a form. Things work OK, except that I can't figure out how to submit multiple values for a field. The POST call expects its input in a hash, which would seem to preclude multiple values. The documentation hasn't helped me. Could someone explain how to do this?

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Re: HTTP::Request and multiple select
by Fastolfe (Vicar) on Feb 10, 2001 at 02:00 UTC
    The reference identifying the form fields and values for your POST request doesn't have to be a hashref. Usually I see this as an array reference specifically for this reason.

    An example from the HTTP::Request::Common docs: 

    POST 'http://www.perl.org/survey.cgi',
     [ name   => 'Gisle Aas',
       email  => 'gisle@aas.no',
       gender => 'M',
       born   => '1964',
       perc   => '3%',
     ];

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Re: HTTP::Request and multiple select
by extremely (Priest) on Feb 10, 2001 at 11:21 UTC
    By multiple values did you mean like a multi-selection box? I think that HTTP::Request will handle that with a simple array ref for the value... 
    use HTTP::Request::Common;
use LWP::UserAgent;
$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $res =$ua->request( POST 'http://localhost/cgi-bin/printenv',
              { Who   => 'Mark', Why  => 'Because',
                FavColors => ['Blue', 'Red', 'Yellow'],
                Hair => 'Balding',
                Etc => 'More Examples'
              }
);
print $res->content;

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    One hasty modification to printenv gives me: 

    #!/usr/bin/perl

use CGI 'param';
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
while (($key, $val) = each %ENV) {
        print "$key = $val<BR>\n";
}
print "<hr>\n";

print "$_ = ".join (", ",param($_))."<BR>\n" for param;

## returns ...

QUERY_STRING = <BR>
CONTENT_TYPE = application/x-www-form-urlencoded<BR>
SERVER_PROTOCOL = HTTP/1.0<BR>
SERVER_SIGNATURE = <ADDRESS>Apache/1.3.6 Server at Ruby.hostile.org Po
+rt 80</ADD
RESS>
<BR>
REMOTE_PORT = 1062<BR>
HTTP_USER_AGENT = libwww-perl/5.48<BR>
GATEWAY_INTERFACE = CGI/1.1<BR>
HTTP_HOST = localhost<BR>
SERVER_SOFTWARE = Apache/1.3.6 (Unix)  (SuSE/Linux)<BR>
SERVER_ADMIN = root@localhost<BR>
REMOTE_ADDR = 127.0.0.1<BR>
SCRIPT_NAME = /cgi-bin/printenv<BR>
SERVER_NAME = Ruby.hostile.org<BR>
DOCUMENT_ROOT = /usr/local/httpd/htdocs<BR>
REQUEST_URI = /cgi-bin/printenv<BR>
UNIQUE_ID = OoTdKsCoAP4AAFYnESI<BR>
REQUEST_METHOD = POST<BR>
CONTENT_LENGTH = 99<BR>
SCRIPT_FILENAME = /usr/local/httpd/cgi-bin/printenv<BR>
PATH = /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin<BR>
SERVER_PORT = 80<BR>
<hr>
Etc = More Examples<BR>
Hair = Balding<BR>
FavColors = Blue, Red, Yellow<BR>
Who = Mark<BR>
Why = Because<BR>

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    --
    $you = new YOU;
    honk() if $you->love(perl)

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